Today was a great day to be a supporter of I-1351, the initiative to lower class sizes in primary and secondary schools across Washington State.

After having trailed and alternated between leading and trailing for the first three days post-Election Night, the initiative appears to have moved away from the precipitous edge, thanks to Washington’s three most populous counties, which finished tabulating another batch of ballots during a special Saturday count.

Counties don’t often tabulate ballots on weekends, but this year, there was evidently such a late influx of ballots that officials in King, Snohomish, and Pierce each brought in workers today to keep the ballot processing going.

As of this evening, I-1351’s lead stands at over 18,000 votes, and Yes has 50.49%. It’s still close, but if the trend holds, we project that I-1351 will pass.

Yesterday, Snohomish County swung back into the Yes column after defecting to the No column two days prior. Also new to the Yes column is the small county of Pacific, which includes the cities of Raymond, South Bend, Long Beach, and Ilwaco.

(Asotin and Island flipped into the Yes camp on the second day – Wednesday – while Spokane joined the Yes side on Thursday. King, San Juan, Pierce, Jefferson, Kitsap, Whatcom, and Grays Harbor have been on the Yes side all along.)

The rest of Washington’s thirty-nine counties are in the No camp, which isn’t really all that surprising, with the notable exception of Thurston County, which generally breaks progressively when most other swing counties do.

Here is a chronology of the count:

Election Night, Tuesday, November 4th: I-1351 trails by 13,555 votes

Wednesday, November 5th (end of day): I-1351 trails by 11,431 votes

Thursday, November 6th (end of day): I-1351 leads by 4,473 votes

Friday, November 7th (end of day): I-1351 leads by 11,373 votes

Saturday, November 8th (today): I-1351 leads by 18,495 votes

The trend seems pretty clear: I-1351 is headed for passage. That’s good news for Washington’s kids. The icing on the cake is that a win for the Class Size Counts coalition would mean that all of Washington’s statewide ballot measures would have had progressive outcomes for the first time since 2009.

There will be no new numbers until Monday afternoon.

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This entry was written by Andrew and posted on November 8th, 2014 at 9:46 PM.

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